The tense match, which included an opening goal from Manchester City centre-back Joleon Lescott, achieved the channel’s highest peak audience of the year so far.

According to unofficial five-minute peak figures, released by the commercial broadcaster, the match peaked at 6.45pm, achieving a 60% share of the entire television viewing audience, despite its broadcast slot.

Between kick off at 5pm and the final whistle, 12.3 million viewers were watching the match, according to the broadcaster.

ITV1's coverage, which began at 4pm and finished 7.30pm, drew an average of nine million viewers, a 47% share of viewing.

The match trounced a later Euro 2012 clash on BBC 1 between host country Ukraine and Sweden, which achieved a peak audience of 6 million at 8.15pm, equivalent to a 24% share of total audience at the time.

The programme, which started its pre-match warm up at 7pm after the final whistle of the England match, recorded a 5.3 million average viewer figure with a 22.4% share of audience.

Challengers to the England versus France match fell by the wayside during the match. The best performer on BBC 1 during the match was the regional news and weather in the build up to the Ukraine and Switzerland match, which recorded an average audience of 4.1 million with a 16.7% viewer share at 6.30pm.

‘Antiques Road Trip’ at 7pm on BBC 2 drew 2.1 million viewers and a 10.8% share. ‘Deal or No Deal’ at 4pm on C4 got a 1.3 million audience figure and 11.1% share and ‘Neighbours’ at 5.30pm on Channel 5 attracted an audience figure of 800,000 and a 3.7% audience share.

Both the peak audience and the average audience for last night’s match were higher than any Euro 2008 match broadcast on ITV1, according to the broadcaster.

ITV’s online sports stream itv.com/sport also attracted 428,740 unique browsers and at its peak ITV was serving 240,000 simultaneous live streams of the simulcast across PC and mobile devices.

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